


for you i would ruin myself

by thelilacfield



Series: there is no world where i am not yours [24]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Private Investigator, F/M, Murder, Shameless Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:06:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28078914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: A smart man would already have gone to the police. But he is not a smart man. Not when it comes to those wondrous eyes of hers and the silk of her smirk.And when he murmurs, “Mrs Barnes,” she laughs throatily and tugs him forward by the tie, pulling a wanton sound from him that makes the tips of his ears flame red.
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Series: there is no world where i am not yours [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859725
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	for you i would ruin myself

**A/N:** AU-dvent day 14! A private investigator/forties-ish au that I've wanted to write for a while. Brought to you by Taylor Swift's _illicit affairs_ and _no body no crime_.

I'm on Tumblr and Twitter **@mximoffromanoff** if anybody wants to chat about all things scarletvision! Enjoy, and please let me know with a comment if you do :)

**warning: offscreen murder, mention in dialogue of domestic abuse, probably a slightly unhealthy relationship dynamic (but all sex is very consensual)**

* * *

"Mrs. Barnes is here, Mr. Shade."

He straightens up in his chair, shifting the nameplate on his desk to point at the door and smooths the collar of his shirt, adjusting his tie to light exactly halfway between his lapels. "Send her in," he says, and his assistant is smirking when she opens the door further and allows Wanda to step inside.

Her lipstick is darker than the last time he saw her, a deep wine red painted on her perfect lips. Hair in perfect curls and her black dress tucked tightly to her waist, the skirt falling straight and perfect around her legs. The perfect widow as her face falls into a stricken expression and she asks, "There's no news, is there?"

"I am doing everything I can, Mrs Barnes," he says, and she's collapsing into the chair opposite him, hand at her heart. He pulls the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his blazer and hands it to her as tears spill over her dark eyelashes. "There, there. I know this is a terrible time. Is there anything more you can tell me about your husband's movements in the days before he disappeared?"

"What does it matter?" she asks, and her slender fingers dart anxiously to her wedding band, twisting it around her finger. "My Jamie is dead, isn't he?"

"It is a personal vow of mine to never keep up on a missing person, Mrs Barnes," he says, and her eyes are glassy with tears, and she's so beautiful he has to clench a fist on the edge of his chair to stop himself moving to comfort her. "I will work until I find your husband. I promise. You cannot lose hope."

"What am I going to do?" she gasps, and there are tears silvering her pretty face, staining her make-up, so many cracks in her that he longs to fill with gold. He has wanted her since Rogers from the police department called him to say his best friend had disappeared and left a devastated wife searching for him. He should never have agreed to take her case. Should have stuck to his long ago vow to never allow emotion to interfere with his cases.

"Mrs Barnes, please-"

"He was my everything," she whispers, and her voice breaks over a choked sob, and he reaches for her delicate hand across his desk. Her hands are cold from the grey press of the day outside, and they curl so gently over his. "I went from living in my brother's home to living with him. He promised to marry me and take care of me when my brother passed. I don't know what I will do without him."

"Did he have a will?" he asks, and her tear-streaked face quivers. "Would it reassure you to know you will be taken care of if we don't find him alive? I can contact his lawyer."

"Pierce hates me," she says, and he bristles internally. He met with Barnes' lawyer after his grief-stricken client set her husband had been to meet his lawyer and never come home, and the oiliness of the man set his teeth on edge. "He thinks Jamie should never have married me. He convinced him I was only seeing him for the money, can you believe that?" A tear slips down her cheek and she meets his eyes. "Do I seem to you like a wife who did not love her husband, Mr. Shade?"

"I know you adored your husband, Mrs Barnes," he soothes her, and he's still holding her hand. He can't pull away, drawn to her even though he knows he'll be burned. "I am trying to help you in your grief. Is there anything more you can tell me?"

"I should never have stepped out with Natasha than day," she frets, and he nods. He already spoke with her, the head doctor of the local hospital's wife, and she confirmed everything Wanda has told him, so unaffected by the disappearance of her best friend's husband. He remembers her red dress and the wonder in the eyes of the young man who drove her car and her coolness. "If I had been at home when Jamie returned, he would still be with me. Perhaps whoever took him would have taken me instead."

"Oh, Wanda..." He clears his throat when she looks up sharply at his use of her first name, and corrects, "Mrs Barnes, you must not fall into the trap of wishing it was you. You are doing everything you can to find your husband."

"He would be far better if he had to find me," she says sadly. "I know he would be out day and night looking for me. He would never rest until I was back by his side. And all I can do is...sit, and worry, and cry."

"You told me he was your anchor after your brother passed," he says, and she nods. "Anyone would be heartbroken to lose a man who supported them through so much, Mrs Barnes."

"You can call me Wanda, if you wish," she says, and there's something dancing in her eyes, and he distracts himself with the gold gleam of her wedding ring. He's still holding her hand, and he feels now that he can't pull away, that it will seem more suspicious if he does. "You have been so kind to me, Mr. Shade. So much more helpful than the police themselves." She rolls her eyes and says, "I would have thought my husband's best friend would put more effort forth in finding him."

"Sergeant Rogers did all he could in referring you to me," he says, and she smiles slightly. "I am his best chance of finding your husband. I have never failed to at least bring a client closure."

"I know you are doing everything for me," she says, and something in her voice has changed. It's taken on a smoky quality, and her eyes are magnets, and he starts when she strokes a thumb delicately over the back of his hand. "You have brought so much joy to these dark days, Mr. Shade."

And her foot is pressed against his calf, the point of her stiletto pushed into his skin, and he startles away from the desk, from the smirk silking across her scarlet lips. "I miss having a man lie next to me at night," she says, and the very sound of her voice makes his breath hitch, and he tugs at his tie to distract himself. "You know what I am implying, don't you?"

"Mrs Barnes, I...you are a client, and you are married, and this is highly inappropriate-"

"You think any man as rich as my Jamie is faithful to his wife?" she asks, and her voice thins to expose the anger he always knew was beneath her facade of the broken widow. "His mistress left these earrings in my bed the last time he had her in my home." His gaze flickers to the rubies hanging from her ears, heavy drops the same colour as blood, and he wonders if her husband's blood spilled over her hands like that.

She's guilty. He knows she did it, that all he has to do is unravel the tapestry of her story to find the dropped stitch. He needs only to do what he is good at, back her into a corner and tug the confession from her, go back to Sergeant Rogers and have her locked away like other scorned women who claim they had true motivation to kill their rich husbands. She smiles at him like the femme fatale of it all, her red lips and black dress and the slit in her dress spilling open to show the suspenders holding up her stockings when she stands and leans across his desk.

A smart man would already have gone to the police. But he is not a smart man. Not when it comes to those wondrous eyes of hers and the silk of her smirk. And when he murmurs, "Mrs Barnes," she laughs throatily and tugs him forward by the tie, pulling a wanton sound from him that makes the tips of his ears flame red.

"It's Wanda, darling," she breathes, her lips brushing his ear, and he groans as those clever fingers unknot his tie and open the buttons of his shirt. "You know that."

"I told you last time was the last time," he says, and she just smiles, and he's transfixed by the length of her legs as she steps around his desk, pushing him down into his chair and climbing into his lap. She slides off her wedding ring as he watches, setting the gold circlet neatly down on his desk, and her breasts are pushing into his chest and he wants to drown and die in her.

"You have been saying every time was the last since you kissed me when I first came to discuss my husband's disappearance with you," she purrs, and her lips find his neck, and he's helpless in her thrall. "And yet you didn't protest when I sucked you off, now, did you?"

" _Wanda_ -"

"Shush, Victor," she breathes, and when she puts a finger to his lips he kisses it, and the way she gasps when he sucks her finger past his lips sets him on fire. She's burning him down and she knows it. "Will you show me why you are the greatest private investigator in New York?"

"I...I can do that by finding your husband," he says, and she laughs low against his cheek, taking his hands to the hem of her skirt, beneath it to the silk of her stockings, and rolling her hips into his, making him grip at the arms of his chair. " _Wanda_ -"

"Let him be lost," she says callously. "It lets me have _you_." When she kisses him, he tastes the wax of her lipstick, her tongue eager against his, and she has her skirt pulled up, rubbing herself against him and rendering him helpless and clumsy. She's somehow still so in control, kissing his neck and whispering, "I can feel how much you want me, sweetheart."

"Wanda _, please_ ," he breathes, and her delighted laugh sings through him. She presses her forehead to his when she sinks onto him, and they're gasping into the same air, his hands sliding over her dress to cup her breasts, and the heavy diamond necklace is clinking with the swing of her hips, and when he leans to kiss her neck she grips his hair and gasps his name.

" _Fuck_ ," she curses, and there's something so wanton and wonderful about her. What they're doing is every shade of wrong, he's letting a woman who is still technically married do this, he's fucking a client he knows fine well is guilty, and doing it in his office, no less. But when he has her like this, hot and heavy on top of him, lost in the tight, wet heat of her, he can't regret it. He can't tell himself to stop falling into her traps. He is the fly to her spider, the moth to her flame, and the way she arches into him and moans his name when his fingers creep beneath her skirt to find her clit is the greatest thrill he's ever known.

He will never stop being transfixed by the way she loses herself. The press of her hips into his, the light in her face, her eyes closed and her swollen lips shaping his name. It pushes him over the edge just to see her, and she's smiling so softly, the chair creaking beneath them when she kisses him, and he's slick with sweat beneath his suit. She still looks perfect aside from the crimson slash of her smeared lipstick, and when she climbs out of his lap and lowers her skirts he is left pathetically slumped, pants still unbuttoned and shirt collar stained with red.

"Another productive meeting, I believe, Mr. Shade," she says, and slides her wedding ring back on taking his handkerchief to wipe away her ruined lipstick, perfect again. "Please do call if there is any news on my husband. Or drop by my home, of course. I would welcome you."

After she has sashayed out of his office, he spins the dial on his phone and listens to the customary, "Sergeant Steve Rogers," that greets him.

"Sergeant Rogers, I have just spoken again with Mrs Barnes," he says, fixing the button on his pants. "Every time I see her she seems increasingly upset. She is becoming convinced her husband is dead and we won't find him. If there is anything you've found to raise her hopes-"

"Nothing, Shade," Rogers says, and his voice is thin and impatient, and he thinks again of how callous the police sergeant is with the wife of his missing best friend. "I care about finding Bucky too, you know."

"Perhaps it's time to revisit my original theory-"

"Oh, Shade, not this again," Rogers sighs. "Wanda has an alibi. And she was in love with Bucky from the moment she met him. It wasn't her, and you should be focusing on finding out who did this rather than acting like you're in some mystery picture."

"Her alibi could have been involved too-"

"Natasha is Doctor Banner's wife, she would never hurt a fly," Rogers says, and he huffs in frustration at the blindness of the man who is supposed to solve these cases. "If I believed Wanda had hurt him, don't you think I would have questioned her immediately? What would you even think her motivation was?"

"She has mentioned in passing she believes Mr. Barnes was unfaithful-"

"Watch your tongue, Shade," Rogers spits. "Bucky was a simple man who loved his wife. He brought her a diamond a week after they met. Every time I see her she has some new jewel. What would you call that if not love?"

"Bribery?" he suggests, and he can almost see the tense of Rogers' jaw.

"Just puzzle out who killed my friend and shut up, Shade," he snaps, and he's gone from the other end of the line. And Victor lowers the phone back to its cradle, watching the dial click back into place.

Wanda killed her husband. He may not know how, and he may not be able to catch her as she slips through his fingers like shadow, but he will catch her out.

He only hopes that it isn't too late for him to set aside feeling and watch her arrested.

* * *

"The phone will not dial itself, Mr. Shade," Darcy says, her dark curls falling over her shoulder as she collects the files from his desk. "You will have to talk to Mrs Barnes sometime."

"This never gets easier," he says, and his secretary just laughs as she swings out of his office again. Only when he hears the dull sound of the radio she keeps in her desk crackling to life does he reach for the phone and slowly dial the number, each click of the dial a moment closer to a mistake.

"Barnes residence," comes her lovely voice, the Sokovian sharpness that lingers, and his body is already responding to the sound of her, and he has to shift in his chair.

"Mrs Barnes, this is Victor Shade from Shade Investigations," he says, straightening up and trying to sound strict and business-like.

"Oh, Mr. Shade," she purrs, her voice so warm it seems she could be right next to him. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I have news on your husband's case, Mrs Shade," he says. "But...it is news I would prefer not to share over the phone. Perhaps I could drop by your residence?"

"Whenever you wish, darling," she says, and the pet name breaks him, makes him flash back to moments of her in his lap, that word breathed against his neck and her hands on him. "Just let yourself in, the knocker isn't always obvious."

So he stands at the precipice at her door, his hand on the doorknob. And he takes a deep breath to steady himself before he steps into her home. There are still signs of another man everywhere, polished shoes by the door and a hat on the coat hook, and he has to tamp down a hot swarm of jealousy. She was married, a widow now, and he cannot be jealous of that. He should have no reason to be jealous at all.

"Victor," comes the soft sound, and he turns to almost choke on his own breath. Wanda is descending the staircase in a black robe, edged with fur, but that is not the most notable thing. The material of it is sheer, showing every exciting inch of her body, and he hastily averts his eyes. "You were longer than I expected. I've been waiting all alone."

"Mrs Barnes, there is important news about your husband's case," he says, and when he looks her eyes are glittering. She isn't even caring to keep up the facade of the distraught wife anymore, her hips swinging as she crosses the foyer and drapes her arms around his neck, and she's so warm, the sweet scent of her perfume invading his senses. "Wanda-"

"Sweetheart, you're hard as a rock," she breathes, demonstratively pushing her hips into his and tugging a groan from some primal place in him. "Do you really want to talk about my husband's case right now?"

Only when her hands cup his face does he realise she isn't wearing her wedding ring, no jewels her husband gave her, and he says, "We have to discuss-"

"The only thing we should be discussing is where in this ridiculous manor you want to fuck me until you forget your own name," she breathes, and he finally surrenders, crashing his mouth to hers. She clings to him, her nails sharp on his skin, and he lifts her from her feet, blindly carrying her through the foyer until he finds a flat surface and presses her against it.

"Sorry," he whispers at the tiny pained noise that leaves her, and she just smiles.

"On the piano, really?" she asks, and he blushes. She just smiles, kicking the polished lid over the black and ivory keys and pushing him down onto the plush stool, her legs sliding over his shoulders and leaving him speechless. "What do you want to do with me right now, sweetheart?"

He doesn't know where to look when her delicate hands unwrap the tie of her robe and the sheer material slides down her arms, pooling around her hips. She's so beautiful, her eyes bright with triumph, and he leans up to kiss her, dancing his fingertips over the lines of her ribs. She holds too much power over him, a siren luring him to jagged rocks and certain death, and he's still trailing kisses down the flat plane of her stomach, feeling her breath jump, and breathing her name when she spreads her legs.

Heaven must be having his head between her legs, her hands in his hair and her hips undulating into his mouth, her soft cries of his name. At moments like this, he never thinks of this as a mistake, only the rightness of being with her. He takes her hand and she grips his desperately, urges him on and on in her softly smoky voice, and when she cries out he presses his face into her thigh, peppering kisses to the soft skin as she comes down.

"So," she says, slowly sitting up, and he sees the flush spilling down her chest and her hard nipples and wants so badly he can barely breathe, "what did you want to tell me about my husband's case?"

"Mrs Barnes, this seems an inappropriate time-"

"What, you can't have a sensible discussion with an erection?" she teases, and he blushes, shifting on the stool in a futile attempt to hide the bulge in his pants. "I'll take care of you, sweetheart, don't worry. But say what you came here to say first."

"They found your husband's body," he says, and she looks momentarily stricken, and he wonders if he's wrong about her. But he catches the momentary flash of happiness in her eyes, and if she was so heartbroken over her husband she wouldn't be sitting naked in front of him with the ghost of his kisses still on the insides of her thighs. "Someone threw him into the sea, but his body washed up after the storms. A hiker found him and called it in. They are checking who owns all of the boats moored there to check who has an alibi for the night your husband disappeared."

"Oh, goodness, I...how awful," she gasps. "Do...do they know how he died?"

"There are no marks on his body," he says, and she clasps a hand to her chest. "My personal suspicion is that he was poisoned."

"My Jamie was a rich man, and a man doesn't become rich without enemies," she says softly. "Oh, I...I suppose I can't wear my wedding ring. I don't know what I'll do with the _house_."

"Alexander Pierce will be in touch to discuss the will," he says, and she nods. "But I believe Mr. Barnes left everything to you. He had no children, after all, and his sisters are taken care of by husbands themselves. You are his next of kin, unless...unless there is any chance you could be expecting?"

"Oh goodness, no," she says, disgust flickering in her eyes. "I told him there would be no children for a while, and he accepted that after a time."

"Sergeant Rogers will want to speak to you again," he says, and she just nods. "Wanda, if...if there is anything I can do to support you, please let me know. Anything you need, I will do my best to provide it."

"There is one thing I need," she breathes, and she's slinking to her knees, unbuttoning his pants and wrapping her hand around him. He watches her lick a hot line up his cock before she sinks her mouth around him, and tosses his head back with a shout of her name.

She killed her husband and threw his body into the ocean to hide her crimes. He has no doubt that she did it. But when she kisses him, when she coils herself perfectly into his lap, he gets lost in her.

No matter her evil, there is an increasingly loud part of him that doesn't want to lose her.

* * *

She isn't wearing black. It's the first thing he notices when she lets him into her manor, her stunning red dress. It fits her perfectly, drawing attention to her slim waist, the flare of her hips, the curve of her ass and her perfect breasts. There are rubies around her neck, and she's wearing only those when she crawls on top of him in the bed she once shared with her husband, his hands gripping her hips for dear life and those sinful lips sucking bruises into his chest, her nails leaving crescents carved into his skin.

They haven't stayed away from each other since Barnes' body was dragged from the beach. If she hasn't been in his office, tucked beneath his desk with her mouth on him or splayed across it with his head between her legs, he's been in her home. All the traces of her husband are gone now, and she welcomes him in with open arms. There isn't a room they haven't had sex in, her gorgeous body tangled around his, her lips at his ear whispering filthy things beyond his wildest dreams, the perfect arch of her back each time she comes under his hands and mouth. He should be running in the other direction, but he's too drawn in. He can't untangle himself from her now.

She curls herself around him like ivy over crumbling walls when they're done, and still naked, and she's so beautiful like this. Melting in her afterglow, a soft smile playing at her mouth, and running a hand over his chest, tracing patterns like gold into his skin. "I hope this won't end when your investigation closes," she says softly, and presses a kiss over his heart. "Though I'm sure Rogers will still be some time in his questioning."

And there is it. The opening to tell her what he came over to say, before that red dress sent him spinning. "Actually, they've made an arrest," he says, and she straightens up, almost distracting him from his intention with the way her breasts sway. "A man who owns one of the boats moored at the beach where they found the body. He has no alibi for the evening in question, and Sergeant Rogers found an eyewitness who says that's the boat they saw out in the water."

"Oh." The single sound from her makes him glance at her face, sharp and guarded. "And they think he will be found guilty?"

"There isn't much he can do to try to argue his innocence," he says, and she turns away from him. She takes his crumpled shirt from the end of the bed and wraps it around herself, facing away from him. And he sits up and kisses her shoulder, wrapping an arm around her. "This is good, Wanda. We can all move on."

"I did it." Her voice is barely above a whisper, and he stills. "I killed him. So go. Tell Sergeant Rogers that I'm the one who killed his best friend. He always thought I was so in love. Tell him I have claws."

"Wanda-"

"I only married him because my brother was dead and I was in the water for any shark that wanted me," she says, and her voice is cold, the words tumbling out of her. "He was rich, and he promised me the world. He brought me diamonds and dressed me in silk. I'm the daughter of immigrants who passed away when I was just a child, I couldn't say no."

When she turns to look at him, there are tears in her eyes, and some absurd part of him wants to kiss them away. He should be listening to every word, recording her confession somehow, but he's transfixed by the way she is breaking. "He was kind to me at first," she breathes, and his stomach drops. "Then it all started. The accusations that I was flirting with his friends, with business partners, with any man I looked at her. James was...a man who cared what other people thought of him. I was just another one of his trophies, like the mansion or the grand piano or the fancy watches. He decided how I acted, where I went, what I wore. I was there to clutch his arm and simper in front of men he wanted to impress. His beautiful foreign wife, the girl he could send back to Sokovia if I stepped out of line. I was only worth my pretty face and a perfunctory fucking once a week-"

"Wanda, _stop_ -"

"And then the family talk started," she hisses, and her fists are clenched so tight her knuckles seem about to split through her skin, and he can't stand to watch her like this, trembling and angry and on the verge of tears. "I told him I didn't want a family yet. Maybe ever. Losing yours doesn't make you eager to start your own with a man you don't even love. I only had Nat on my side, all of his friends were making jokes about whether he was trying hard enough. He didn't like that." She shifts and slowly says, "The night before he disappeared...died, we had an argument. He said I was an embarrassment, and I must be seeing someone else to have stopped having sex with him and that if I was cheating on him he was going to send me back to Sokovia and find some other foreign slut to drape in diamonds-"

" _Stop_ -"

"And I screamed back, I snapped," she whispers, and the tears start to fall, scarring her pretty face silver, tearing her apart. "I told him I didn't love him, I never had, and he was welcome to anyone he wanted. He said he had to have a child with me, his wife, and I said I would never in a thousand years want him to be the father of any child of mine. I threatened divorce, and he...he..." She trails off, her face collapsing into ruin, and he wants so badly to take her in his arms when she finally breathes, "He _hit_ me."

" _Wanda_ -"

"He was wearing his signet ring, and it cut me," she says, and her voice is barely above a whisper. "I ran out of the door and straight to Natasha. She gave me whiskey to numb the pain, and her husband cleaned me up, and she told me I had to leave him. But I had nowhere to go, and I...I like the money. I've never had it, and everything is so much easier when I'm not terrified of where my next meal is coming from." Her face darkens, and she says, "And then she gave me a vial, and told me to go home and pretend to want to make things right with him."

"You don't have to tell me-"

"I went home the next morning, while James was at work," she says, and her voice is becoming steel, all hard, sharp edges. "And I cleaned the house, made myself pretty, cooked dinner and brought out the expensive whiskey. He came home with flowers and a new diamond bracelet, a mouth full of apologies. He'd lost control, he said. It would never happen again. He loved me, only me. No more mistresses, just us. And I nodded, and I smiled. I watched him drink every drop of that whiskey." Her face is all shadow and triumph and she says, "I watched him choke on his own vomit. I watched him die. And then I called Natasha, and she took me to dump his body in the ocean."

"Wanda..." She's finally quiet, and he reaches for her hand. "Please. Look at me."

She does, and her face is a war of anger and tears, and her voice is harsh when she says, "So run off to Steve. Tell him it was me. Tell him I seduced you to stop you figuring it out. Do whatever you want. I freed myself from him, and prison is a thousand times sweeter than a loveless ruin of a marriage."

"Wanda, I'm not going to Sergeant Rogers," he says, and he cups her face between his hand, smearing the tearstains from her cheeks. "Darling, I always knew it was you. From the second you stepped into my office. The first hunch is usually the best one."

"Then why did you-"

"Rogers insisted you would never have hurt your husband, you were too in love with him," he says, and her lip curls. "Wanda, I am so sorry for what you have gone through. I won't tell him. In fact, I..." He takes her hand, presses a lingering kiss to her palm, and says, "I've been thinking that perhaps this would be my last case. Perhaps I want a quiet life and no more thoughts of murder and motive."

"Victor, you...you should be running to arrest me," she says. "I just confessed to my husband's _murder_. I just told you I slept with you so you wouldn't arrest me!"

"I knew what you were doing," he says. "Why don't you think about why I went along with it, Wanda?" He leans into her space, kisses her, and says, "You were so beautiful the moment you walked into my office. I knew what you'd done, but I couldn't stop myself. And now, even when you tell me you did it, I can't..." He gulps and says, "I can't lose you."

"Victor-"

"I love you, Wanda Maximoff," he breathes, and her eyes go wide. "I love every inch of you. Every part. The part of you that freed yourself from a controlling husband is my favourite. And I...I want to be with you."

"Isn't that against your moral code?" she asks, and he chuckles.

"If I had morals when it came to you, I would never have touched you while the possibility existed that you were still a married woman," he says, and slowly wraps his hands around her waist, pulling her close. "Wanda, let me make you happy. Let me make you a free woman. Not in this house, this city, with everyone whispering about you. Let me take you somewhere you can be new."

"I've heard this speech before," she says, and then she tilts her head and a tiny smirk creeps over her lips. "That story did not end well."

"I mean it more than he ever did," he says. "I can't offer you diamonds or silk dresses or a manor house with a grand piano in the foyer. But I can promise that you will never be a trophy to me. I won't ask anything of you. Not even for you to love me the way I love you. Just let me set you free."

* * *

Westview is the perfect place to disappear. He told Sergeant Rogers that the Barnes case had taken too much out of him. He's a librarian now, his glasses slipping down his nose while he recommends books to bored housewives and watches teenagers think they're being secretive browsing the romance novels. City society watched the former Mrs Barnes leave with all accusations of her having been the one to do it gone by the arrest of a man who simply had a vendetta against the successful businessman with a beautiful wife. They said they hoped she'd find peace.

He hopes she has. He watches her in the garden of their home, painting the picket fence red to break the monotony of the white that lines every other square of emerald lawn, reading on the lawn swing, her feet tucked beneath her. Gone are the expensive dresses, replaced by full skirts that lie in colourful patterns over her slender legs, cardigans and sweaters tucked over her shoulders. She's as exquisite as she was when he saw her wear silk and velvet, and she still lets him into her bed every night, wrapping herself around him.

It wasn't a lie when he said he was asking nothing of her. But as summer breaks over Westview, rising in neighbourhood gatherings and lemonade stands and children shrieking and laughing in the streets, she curls up to him after they've had sex beneath the star-scattered sky, the smoke from their cigarettes rising towards the moon, and breathes, "I love you," against his shoulder.

He proposes in the autumn. It's a simple ring, bought with what he has left of his last payment from Shade Investigations. And his plan goes awry when he catches a pan on fire cooking dinner, and after they've gotten the flames snuffed out and he's gazing at her with a smear of soot on her cheek and her hair falling out of curls, he goes helplessly to one knee and stutters out, "Marry me?"

She kisses him, and breathes her yes onto his lips a thousand times as they sink to the kitchen floor and her skirts are shoved up around her hips. When they get married, they both wear white, and they sway in their dining room after the small ceremony, her hand against his heart. "It's a good thing you've made an honest woman of me now," she breathes, and he tilts his head in confusion. "Well, darling, you can't have as much sex as we do without consequence."

Wedding ring shining under their lights, she presses his hand to her belly, and after a moment he realises. "Oh, _Wanda_ , oh...are you sure?" he asks, and she nods, her smile so bright. "But...you always said you didn't want a family-"

"With him," she breathes, and reaches up to cup his face. "But with you...I feel free. I'm happy. And I am choosing to do this with you. I choose you, and us, and our family. Every day."

"But-"

"I never wanted diamonds or silk dresses or a manor with a grand piano in the foyer," she says softly. "It made my life easier, yes. But it was all material. I want this." She gestures to their home, comfortable and cosy and waiting for children to fill it with light and laughter. "I want stars, and open space, and freedom. I want a man who loves me enough to let me be myself. I want a family with you, Victor. You are the greatest thing to come out of my first marriage."

"I love you," he whispers, and kisses her, tugging at the tiny buttons on the back of her dress. "I love you more than words could ever say. You ruined me."

"You mended me," she whispers. "I think that's a fair exchange."


End file.
